Blue Lock

I really enjoy this series so I decided to lose my review virginity
Overall score: 9.5
There are many times sports animes that are way too crazy and take time to get invested in, but this manga is really quick to pick up and enjoy.
It starts with a simple plot and the skills characters have are very realistic. The problem in the entire anime is solid and it makes a lot of sense. It is not just focused on the MC and the art is very clean. Every time I see a page of a score I screenshot it because it's that clean. The character's designs also are very interesting and I like how I can differentiate every character although I forget their names.

The biggest impression left on me is the art style and the story since it inspired me to start drawing since it was so good. It's definitely on one of my favorite manga lists. It Is very enjoyable please give it a chance!

Blue Lock is an interesting manga, like other sports manga such as Haikyuu, Blue Lock will get your adrenaline pumping and will make you want to play football. Unlike Haikyuu and most other sports manga with team based games Blue Lock focusses on the individuality and growth of individuals not a team.

Story:(8/10)
The premise right off the back is very interesting and focusses on building the skills and the "Egos" of the players. The pace feels natural and after every chapter you are dying to read more. A complaint I see often is that it doesn't feel very realistic, and while I agree that this is a manga where you will see the characters doing ridiculous shit for highschoolers it still feels somewhat grounded and not totally unrealistic. The setting is also very nice as it does away with the very cliché and overused high school setting and instead puts all the students in a sort of deathmatch facility which gives the setting a new fresh spin to it and makes the experience seem more realistic and exciting. There are some plot holes and things I can't get out of my mind, but overall the story is very competent and an interesting read.

Characters: (7/10)
I have to gripes with the characters of this manga, some of the side characters don't get much depth or backstory such as the main character. All we really know about him is that he lost a game because he passed instead of taking the shot himself, no backstory, no family nothing. We don't know his motivations or his situation we just know he wants to be the best striker. And to some extent that's alright however I am still annoyed by the lack of backstory and motivation for some of the characters. The side characters also don't feel very developed and don't have a lot of motives. There is some development, but I think for true development and backstory there needs to be a lot more chapters so I shall reserve my judgement. The self improvement and the journey of each character is the one redeeming feature of the characters in Blue Lock and at least makes them interesting.

Art(10/10)
The art for this Manga is amazing. I love the way the mangaka makes the art very sharp and clean for most of the manga, however during the high intensity moments the arts gets a lot wilder with intense lines and a sort of jagged art style which makes the whole experience seem a lot more intense. The character designs are mostly unique and quite distinctive. Not much to say here really just google some of the art and you can see how good it is.

Enjoyment(10/10)
For all of its flaws I really like Blue Lock for the same reason I like Haikyuu. It gets my blood pumping and makes competitive spirit boil. This is one of those mangas that will make you want to play some football and I really love that feeling. Also while reading some chapters my heartrate sped up and I could feel my blood racing and adrenaline pumping. SO if you're looking for a sports manga which is very different from the others on the market, which will make your blood boil and heart race, with a compelling story and lots of potential and fantastic art then I would recommend you pick up blue lock.

Blue Lock Volume 1 Review: A Hero Who Cares Only About Themselves

Just to be clear I am reviewing Blue Lock by volumes since the whole series is not even close to being finished. That said let's get deep into it.

This manga was my first sports manga/anime viewing and it was with my least favorite sport, soccer.

I have never really gotten why soccer is the number one sport in the entire world but this manga made it all too clear as to why that is. This manga not only builds a fictional Japan that is focused on soccer and claiming the World Cup but also uses real life players and soccer knowledge to give this fictional world a sense or realism while also enticing and interesting the reader by its sheer subversion of shonen manga expectations. Famous shonens like One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia, and Black Clover all are popular and use the traditional shonen troupe, The "Power of Friendship" or the "Power of Bonds". But this manga wants to turn that troupe upside down, inside out by forcing the MC and the rest of the cast to be selfish in their desires to be the best. There is only one spot at the top and you gotta fight for it together and against each other. This bottom line alone really excited me throughout the first volume. Never have I read a manga that told the MC to be selfish or your dreams are nothing but dreams. That honestly relates to me a lot because I have high ambitions and I have to make sacrifices like these budding kings do and its beautiful to see it drawn in a manga landscape. The story is laid out very cohesively and consecutively so that the story and plot is explained, background is given, the MC is introduced and their primary fault is shown, and the whole reasoning behind this story and why it matters to our world. The supporting cast is an interesting group to say the least, they were not much dived into except for one but I look forward to all of their character development even if it means they won't be in the manga forever because they might get kicked. Another thing I liked a lot about this manga and maybe it is something all sports anime/manga do is developing the MC outside the battlefield. Not with backstory or social interaction but with curiosity. The MC questions himself, his actions, the actions of others and him doing this is probably in tune with a lot of readers who are confused on the concepts introduced in this manga so it is nice to see and feel some mutual growth between the main character and the reader.

There was something that the main teacher of this manga said; "It is nonsensical indeed. But then so is the world. Either you win or you lose.” That quote really hit me in the chest because of just how true it is. This world, our world is undeniably nonsensical and cruel but only those with the tenacity and courage to fight for their dreams and beliefs in it will succeed. That is the message of this manga and that is what you are in store for if you keep reading this manga past chapter four. I really enjoyed the first volume. This is my second time reading the manga because the first time I blew through all of it due to my explosion of interest. Hope this helps you decided to give it a chance. Whether you love soccer, manga, shonen, sports, or fighting for your dreams there is room for everybody to enjoy this piece of art.

When i try to find manga/anime sport every series must have friendship power, but in this series they doesn't have friendship power or something like that every character on this series just see other character in the field like object to create goals but in outside field they friendly give advice each other to developing they skill maybe for now they not have permanent team cause in this series the coach just find the best striker one person from 300 striker for japan respentative. i think this series is different from other sport series, why ? cause every character on this series they prety egoism. it's great to see this series every week ( sorry for bad english ).

Blue Lock is my first sports-based manga I've dived into blindly, knowing nothing advanced about Soccer and it did what a sports manga should do fairly well. It balances (atleast up to latest chapter I read) between actual sports and fantasy sports well, leaving enough room to explore actual skills and having room for fantasized skills

The story isn't exceptional but it does intrigue on first sight, a training camp that is made solely to produce an egoistical star after kicking every other participants. Following our MC, we continue the story in his perspective to better himself, passing trials and meeting new challengers. It is not too cliche but it isn't too exceptional neither. If I had to choose a gripe it'd be the lack of focus on other characters in match - 11vs11 match but most of the time they're only focused on the key characters on opposing side, not every player could stand out but it'd feel more appropriate had there been random characters popping in & out to guard/push/etc.

The art is the main attraction of the manga imo, characters close-ups are amazing and detailed, actions and movements flow well between panels and it is easy to follow along the actions in a game.

Character designs for the manga could vary, on one hand the series tried hard on expanding team Z characters (the MC's team) and also introducing new rivals from other teams. With the former, those that aren't given enough screen time are basically forgotten while with the latter aren't interesting beyond their "weapons". It doesn't help too when the only design-able part are their faces considering most of the characters' physique are jacked, making some characters indistinguishable on first glance.

It is a series worth checking out if you want to dip into sports shonen as I believe it does most that should be, well. The "fights" could be repetitive at times (MC clutches every dire moment) but the sky high hype moments are worth the read.

Story : 6/10
Art : 8/10
Character : 5/10
Enjoyment : 9/10 on peak moments
Overall : 7/10

You ever heard of the Japanese national team striker Mike Havenaar? The name will throw you off but he was born in Hiroshima and raised solely in Japan, by the way of a Dutch father. Japanese family names generally don't sound as windmill-y as his surname. You'd be forgiven in thinking he was some naturalised athlete who was pushed through for a passport by the Japanese Football Association. Many, many countries do such a thing, scouring for any promising player whose grandparent was born in some town in your country, and snapping them up for a full cap, therefore locking them into only being able to repesent them on a national level. Hell, Japan does this quite heavily in another team sport where they aren't world beaters, rugby. Their captain lived in New Zealand for his first 15 years and most of their forwards are Pacific Islanders. Even though you can't buy players, you can still look outside your borders to fill in gaps and improve your level of play.

Back to Mike, he has typical Dutch number 9 attributes; tall, good in the air and able to make his own space. But he was never that good. If you go look at his club history of Wikipedia, you could pick out another entry for some other Japanese could-have-been, mixed them around and I couldn't tell you what one is Mike's. It's the formula of "playing in the J League when you're 18, try yourself out in Europe, play in a top 5 league, drop down the pyramid, and go back to the J League". For the past 30 years, since professional football landed in Japan, many hopefuls try but almost all don't make it. If they do, they fit into the sterotypes of Japanese footballers; small, quick, technical. Wingers, attacking midfielders, ball-playing centre midfielders. The last success Japan had in the final third of the pitch would be Shinji Okazaki with Leicester City in 2016, but his countribution was purely as a second striker to play balls in the channels to more clinical players.

Blue Lock takes this observation of Japanese football and plays with it in a comic format, taking jabs at Japanese quirks and offers a solution in still quite a Japanese fashion, to force a solution. The story revolves around Yoichi Isagi, a normal high school footballer who has normal high school aspirations to go to nationals, bread and butter stuff for a sports manga. He and 300 other high school forwards get invited to a national training camp run by the Japanese footballing body. They all arrive and a cultish puppet master of a sporting director called Jinpachi Ego wants to mould the world's best striker, everyone chases after him towards that dream. What follows is a story of teenage boys being kept in an interment camp where they train and compete with each other to rise out on top, all the while breaking the shackles of "goody-goody" notions of a team sport, but to create a player who is the physical repesentation of the word ego.

We then see the whole spectrum of interpersonal relationships in a ball game. Rivals, allies, betrayal, backstabbing. Even characters with "a lot of resolve". But football is in fact a game played with multiple players on two teams, so the story does have to betray the idea of forming the singular player in order to show us football. Teams are formed, but they are also disbanded. And because this makes up the bulk of football-based chapters, it has to fall into the trap of having characters being inspired by watching other characters playing. But overall it does it best to tie it together as we are marching towards who will be number one, and that leads us to our protag.

Isagi is the safe kind of main character as his growth is around always finding another peak after climbing the mountain. We are first introduced to him as an almost story about his high school team missing out on nationals because he passed to his teammate, and questioning himself about his ability and whether he made the right decision. As we go through the story, he works towards becomming the best piece by piece (and the manga makes sure you know it's piece by piece, as it's always symbolised by a flurry of jigsaw pieces). He comes up against players who start out better, but he catches up and wins over their adoration, making friends or at least mutual respect of his opponents.

Now I understand that sounds like I'm describing most plots for a lot of sports manga, but it works well and it paces its story very well. It allows the story to display meaningful growth and progress without the need for exhaustive tournaments. This is all training arc and it never stops with it. At the end of these matches or events, the story always reminds you that even though there are teams and positions, this is still Isagi's story, and his victory alone. Football manga struggles with this premise and resolution because it wants to repesent football in the way it is in reality, where every goal is built from your team. Baseball manga does not have this problem, the author can either pick the template of relief pitcher or bases-loaded batter, and you have your hero whose thing caused them to win. The premise of Blue Lock allows the story to exist as a baseball manga, but they just kick the ball instead.

But the characters, supporting and main, really don't have much going for them as well-rounded personalities. Isagi's "I play football, I get better" philosophy could of been forgiven if he had a cast of interesting traits and motivations around him, but sadly he does not. Other characters fall into either the "hot-blooded, bleached haired rough boys", "quiet and princely narcissists" and "kooky and aloof weirdos" archetype. And it's difficult to resolve with typical manga means, as you can't go too slice of life as they are not in high school, and girls are banned. You can't go too dramatic as boys don't cry. Artstyles in such genres like these don't really change, as they need to be able to show fluidity in a static medium, so there's a lot of heavy outlines and diagonal artwork to suggest motion. The characters designs are on par for what you would expect for a manga being published in 2021, no one will have any harsh objections to it.

So Blue Lock, it's pretty good. It takes an observation on football and explores it without losing respect for the sport, and it does something pretty much every other football manga has failed to do: make a comic read like a highlight reel, rather than bore like watching a nil-nil draw for 90 minutes.

"After all, a first-rate striker is one who appears in football's most critical moment."

Let me start by saying that this is my first review ever.

Story: 9/10

This story is not the typical sports manga following a highschool team that wants to go and win nationals, it goes beyond that. Instead of emphasizing on the usual qualities, such as teamwork and supporting teammates, it focuses on the “egoism” a player needs to develop in order to become the best. This different approach might seem silly at first since it’s a story about football/soccer -not sure what you call it- but it definitely makes sense later because of the “survival game” element of the series.

The pace is actually pretty good so far up to ch. 46, everything is explained to the amount needed and the feeling of wanting to read more is certainly there.

Art: 10/10

I have one thing to say: my eyes have been blessed.
Some panels & pages are exceptional, making the story even more entertaining.
The art gets even better, comparing the 1st chapter to the 46th one.
Even the little details are drawn very nicely, the balls, the shoes, the characters’ hair, the field, etc.

Character: 9/10

The number of characters appearing in Blue Lock is pretty normal and it’s really enjoyable how each one of them gets his own part in the story, teammates and rivals included.
Some of the players’ skills are actually out of this world for highschoolers but overall, very exciting to see.
It’s also nice that we get to see how some of them are off-game and their development through the story.

Enjoyment: 10/10

Blue Lock is a thrilling series, it definitely leaves you in agony and wanting more by each chapter you read.
You may even find yourself feeling a rush of adrenaline while reading it, especially with some chapters and panels. It's definitely a series worth your time, especially if you're a fan of sports.

I usually don't read Sports Mangas because it doesn't get me as hyped unlike Animes. But boy, does this manga gets me soooo hyped up. I have zero knowledge of football/soccer and yet it's very easy of understand and not at all confusing. The storyline is interesting, though less humorous unlike other sport animes (Haikyuu!!, for example) but still very well-written. None of the characters are boring at all. I find myself loving all these characters. The art is amazing as well, I never get tired of looking at it. I honestly don't want to recklessly give a 10 but I can't think of any score lower for this one.

If this ever becomes an anime (I really hope so!) it would definitely become a big hit, no doubt.

Really worth the read, give it a try if you haven't done so!

This instantly managed to become a favourite of mine, probably the best sports series I've read or watched. In short, this is an edgier spin on sports manga.

In the start I was a bit skeptical, I found the setup a bit cheesy and edgy for the sake of being edgy at first, but oh boy did my opinion change up real quick.

One of the strengths of Blue Lock is definitely its characters. This story manages to take somewhat generic anime/manga tropes and make them new its own in a way. While series like haikyuu tend to focus on character relationships, especially duos, I found that Blue Lock focuses more on building the players individually, and only then forms relationships, while seemingly not being scared to tear them up.

Usually, with sports series I tend to get attached to the characters, and tend to not get that invested in the matches. But here the matches are amazing too. Even if you can already predict who is going to win and lose, they still manage to get you extremely hyped. While reading some of them I was so pumped that I started literally shaking from excitement.

The art also plays a huge role in the enjoyment factor. It's absolutely stunning. The way the player auras are drawn, the eyes THE EYES??!!? so beautiful, the expressions give me chills. Also the artist manages to draw the matches in a way where I, as a person who doesn't know anything about football, sports even, manages to clearly understand everything that is going on. Big props to the artist, great execution.

In terms of pacing, I'm more of a fan of manga with fast pacing (like fujimotos works for example), so i really appreciated that this manga didn't dwell on one arc for too long and cut the unnecessary matches out. Some might find this as a flaw, but I personally really loved that.

Debated a lot if this deserves a 10 or 9, but even tho it might have some minor flaws, I enjoyed this immeasurably. If you haven't read this yet, def give this a try, you won't regret it.

Lots of 'first time reviewers' for Blue Lock, huh. I have some thoughts.

I understand why one would enjoy Blue Lock. The art and characters are real pretty, and it's hype in the way of popular sports series like Haikyuu and Kuroko, in the way that definitely eventually guarantees an anime season or two.

I just can't help but feel that the series misses the point of football? Blue Lock is about owning up to your own selfishness and ego as a player in order to prove your superior football skillz.It's interesting but, the problem is that soccer is.. truly a team sport. It doesn't matter if you have the best [forward, attack, whatever the position is], as they won't be able to operate without an equally competent team. WHICH BECOMES EXCESSIVELY CLEAR like twenty chapters in once all the [that same position] players except the protagonist just... default to regular football positions...Why are they even still in this training camp? Even worse, instead of regular football matches (which are great for supporting character conflicts, narrative development, etc, normal sports anime stuff) we end up getting all these fucking wacky and convoluted football-adjacent games and excercices, which aren't satisfying, because they're not football!

Honestly, while ripping off the Kuroko art style (yes, mixed with Bleach, yes yes), they should've also ripped off the rest of the fucking story format. Make sure each team has one of each position, but is just ultra-powerful in that one position. Like this, we can still get over-powered protagonist AND the satisfying functionality of football as the team sport it actually is!

Also again, the art is pretty, but the character designs arent anything special. Most of the characters look like Bleach or Kuroko background characters, unless they're irreparably evil, in which case they look like the weird teeth gangly guy from Yowamushi Pedal. Finally, and this might be just me reading into this a bit too much, but is the lack of women to act as supportive side characters in this manga sort of solved by having two very feminized / homoeroticized players close to the protagonist (I'm thinking of the guy who only ever dribbles and passes and the princess guy)? Much to think about.